Newman's own play

At the age of 75, Paul Newman is making his fifth appearance on Broadway, writes Edward Karam

The programme for the revival of Our Town that has just opened on Broadway contains an amusing biography for its lead actor. Written by Paul Newman himself, it suggests that he is "best known for his spectacularly successful food conglomerate . . .

"Purely by accident," it adds, "he has done 51 films and four Broadway plays." Our Town marks Newman's first theatre appearance in 38 years. The production first appeared at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut, where Newman's wife, Joanne Woodward, is the artistic director; it was directed by a friend, James Naughton. They persuaded the one-time star of Sweet Bird of Youth to play the Stage Manager, and have now brought the production to Broadway's Booth Theatre.

Thornton Wilder's masterpiece may be the quintessential American play. Produced in 1938, with war looming, Our Town focuses on the touchstones of ordinary existence: birth, courtship, marriage and death, as experienced by the inhabitants of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. "It is an attempt to find value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life," Wilder wrote in the preface. Unlike Paul Osborn's Morning's at Seven, the other 1930s masterpiece of small-town Americana, Our Town has become so familiar from countless stagings in regional and community theatres that it seems corny and trite, although its optimism has always had a dark streak.

A major Broadway production always offers the opportunity to look at a chestnut anew. But Naughton's directorial misjudgments won't restore the sheen to Wilder's play. Our Town is famous for having no scenery: instead, the Stage Manager sets each scene for the audience. Wilder, always ahead of the curve in American theatrical experimentation, called for "an empty stage, in half-light". That is not what we get at the Booth.

Sandbags with big looping ropes hang from the flies; flats stencilled "A Midsummer Night's Dream" sit to one side, apparently in storage. An immense street lamp lingers upstage - at about 20ft high, too tall for a street lamp left over from any conceivable production of anything. There is even a stereopticon, and a projection screen on which Newman's Stage Manager gives the audience a slide show about Grover's Corners, sternly snapping his fingers for his unseen assistant to change slides.

The wrong choices multiply. George Gibbs (16) is played by a strapping actor who looks in his mid-20s and ridiculous in plus fours. The planted audience members who step up to quiz Editor Webb about social issues and the arts wear period outfits from 1901 rather than contemporary clothes. The scenes move along at an indifferent pace, as though the play can take care of itself - but it can't.

It should have been easy for Newman to shine in these surroundings, but he has gone out of his way to dim his star wattage amid the ensemble. He enters in a low light, with his back to the audience, directing stagehands to move scenery. Then, having short-circuited possible applause, he turns and begins the play. In white shirt, sleeveless vest and watch fob, with his spectacles down on his nose, his Stage Manager has charm and occasional vinegar, but only once does he reach full throttle. That happens when he says: "You know how it is: you're 21 or 22 and you make some decisions, then wham! You're 70." As he speaks those words, Newman slams a fist into his hand. The shock is electric: clearly, this is a sentiment felt by the actor as much as the character.

At the numerous times my mind wandered from the events on stage, I wondered why someone hadn't cast Jane Curtin as the Stage Manager. Instead she plays Mrs Webb. Whether she is comically contending with an armful of imaginary milk bottles or telling her daughter she is beautiful enough "for all normal purposes", Curtin is vocally and physically on target, nailing the warmth and truth in her character. (- Guardian service)

Our Town is at the Booth Theatre, New York. Box office tel: 001-212-2396200